Management

Jai Rawat – Chief Executive Officer

Jai is a successful serial entrepreneur and an investor, advisor and mentor to several startups. Jai has over 18 years of industry experience and has a track record and deep passion for creating exceptional online consumer products.

Jai’s first startup Obongo was the pioneer in single sign-on and online wallet technologies. It was adopted by several leading banks and created a reach of over 40m users. Obongo was acquired by AOL where Jai served as the director of product marketing working on several key initiatives with a reach of over 35m users.

Jai holds a B.Tech in Computer Science from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur and an MS in Computer Science from Iowa State University. He has won several awards and recognitions including being recognized as one of the top 10 South Asian business and technology leaders. He is a charter member of TiE Silicon Valley, Co-chair of TiE Internet SIG chair and holds 16 patents.

Samir Palnitkar – President

Samir is a serial entrepreneur with over 20 years of industry experience. Samir’s passion is startups and new ideas. He is a founder of four successful startups which include I2P (acquired by Lattice), Obongo (acquired by AOL), Ingot Systems (acquired by Virage) and AirTight Networks (category leader in wireless security). Samir is also an active early stage investor and advisor. His expertise includes social media, strategy, productization/execution, and business process setup.

Samir holds a B.Tech in Electrical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, an MS in Electrical from University of Washington, Seattle and an MBA in International Business from San Jose State University. Samir is the author of two highly acclaimed books and holds 5 US patents.

Engle also founded two startups: AtlanticRancher, a men’s rugged outdoor apparel company and Zovo, a women’s intimate apparel brand. Engle studied architecture at Taliesen, The Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture and holds a degree of Bachelor of Arts equivalent in Architecture.

Gokul Rajaram

Director of Ads, Facebook

Gokul Rajaram is the Director of Ads at Facebook. In this role, he drives the product roadmap and execution for Facebook’s advertising products. Before Facebook, Gokul was Co-Founder and CEO of Chai Labs, a semantic technology startup he grew to profitability and a multi-million dollar annual revenue run-rate before its acquisition by Facebook.

Gokul is also considered as the ‘father of AdSense’ for his pioneering work on the AdSense product during his tenure at Google. Gokul has an MBA from MIT Sloan, a MS in CS from UT Austin, and a B. Tech in Computer Science from IIT Kanpur where he received the President’s Gold Medal for being Class Valedictorian.

Mike Linton

Chief Marketing Officer, Farmers

Mike Linton is the Chief Marketing Officer for Farmers Insurance Group of Companies. Mr. Linton is also member of the Board of Directors of Peet’s Coffee & Tea, a coffee roaster and retailer, as well as Capella Education Company, a public E-learning company.

Mike was the Chief Marketing Officer at eBay, an online auction company, from December 2006 to March 2009. Prior to this, Mr. Linton was Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer for Best Buy Companies from January 1999 through August 2006.

Mike holds a B.S.B.A. in Marketing Research from Bowling Green State University, and a M.B.A. from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University.

Michael Osborne is a serial entrepreneur and C-level executive focused on leadership and scaling teams. Michael serves as an advisor and board member to a number of startups, and most recently helped found and launch Handshakez, an engagement platform for B2B sales people and account management.

Previous to starting Handshakez Michael served as Chief Revenue Officer of Bazaarvoice (Nasdaq: BV) for over six years, from their first year of business through their IPO in February of 2012. Over his years at Bazaarvoice Michael grew the revenue run rate of the company from sub $1m to over $130m and expanded operations into Europe and Asia. Previous to Bazaarvoice Michael was Director of Client Services at Coremetrics for four years, helping to scale and grow the install base while managing top-of-class retention rates.

Earlier in Michael’s career he spent three years at Trilogy Software in the partner management and pre-sales groups working with Financial Services organizations. Hailing from Carnegie Mellon with an Electrical and Computer Engineering degree, Michael’s expertise is in sales leadership, achieving growth goals, and building and motivating world-class teams of sales and service people coupled with a strong understanding of how online businesses operate.

Gaurav Suri

Head of Commerce Sales, Google

Gaurav has extensive entrepreneurial experience in building consumer-focused technology businesses, including start-ups as well as new businesses for established Internet leaders

Most recently Gaurav was Head of Commerce Sales, Emerging Businesses at Google Inc. after Google acquired Like.com where Gaurav was Executive Vice President for Sales & Business Development. Previously Gaurav was VP, New Business Development for NexTag, the leading comparison shopping search engine for Products & Services. Prior to that, Gaurav worked at AOL as Vice President AOL Products, Partner Platforms.

Gaurav received an MBA from Harvard Business School, and a B.S. in Economics with honors from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

Mark Goldstein

CEO, Loyalty Lab

Mark Goldstein is serial entrepreneur with 23 years of experience and an online retail expert with proven success in building companies in the retail, loyalty management and financial industry. Prior to ShopSocially, Mark Goldstein has led several successful startups, CEO of Impulse Buy (acquired by Inktomi), CEO of Bluelight (acquired by Kmart), CEO of Home Account (acquired by Freedom Financials) and Chairman of Loyalty Lab (acquired by TiBCO).

Siva Kumar

CEO, TheFind

Siva Kumar is currently the CEO of TheFind, Inc. a shopping search engine. To-date, Siva Kumar has founded eight venture funded start-ups. He is also an adviser and investor in several startups focusing on the convergence of eCommerce and social networking.